AustLit

'In Scott McCulloch’s debut novel Basin, an aimless nomad called Figure traverses an interminable landscape that feels similar to the impossible staircase in Escher’s lithograph Ascending and Descending. Figure roams the territories bordering the Black Sea, forever moving onwards and forever circling back onto himself. His wayward journey recalls a bad dream: “I feel I’m a ghost who’s wandered into the odyssey of a lunatic,” he reflects.' (Introduction)